economic impact

Tuesday, November 8 is decision-day for Lakewood. Please vote against Issue 64!

Key points to remember:

Issue 64 is a vote on the ordinance that closed Lakewood Hospital. If you disapprove of the deal that closed our publicly owned hospital, vote against 64.

We deserve a better deal. The people of Lakewood owned 100% of our hospital and its assets, and the hospital employed almost 1,100 people. Ending up with a health center that someone else owns, and which will employ fewer than 200, is obviously not investment or progress.

Issue 64 includes no plan to replace lost jobs and tax revenues, or to redevelop the hospital property. In fact a noncompete clause will block other hospital systems from ever introducing competing services on that property.

Lakewood can’t be saddled with debt, because Lakewood Hospital was not in debt. Nor will the city be required to run Lakewood Hospital at a loss. The hospital was never taxpayer-subsidized in more than 100 years, and in fact made consistent profits that benefited the community up until the last year of Cleveland Clinic management.

Voting against Issue 64 won’t land the city with huge legal bills, either. Fighting over Lakewood Hospital in court has actually been the choice of the groups who support 64, again and again.

In this and other ways, the Issue 64 plan is the real drain on Lakewood’s finances and taxpaying public.

No one else, whether Lakewood government or hospital trustees or paid consultants, has prepared any alternative study. But is there any independent corroboration of this estimate? And what does it mean, now, with the hospital currently closed and a public vote pending?

In fact, there is another source that supports the results of Harkness’s study—the Cleveland Clinic’s own 2015 Economic Impact Report.

According to an archived news release from the Cleveland Clinic, its total contribution to Ohio’s economy was $12.6 billion in 2013. The same press release notes that the Clinic directly employed more than 48,000 people in Ohio.

Dividing $12.6B by 48,000 results in an economic impact of $260,000 per employee. Lakewood Hospital employed around 1,100 people.

The full economic impact of 1,100 hospital employees, based on the Clinic’s report, is therefore $286,000,000. That’s within a few percent of the Save Lakewood Hospital study.

Meanwhile, both figures are annual figures. Losing the economic contribution of Lakewood Hospital won’t be a one-time problem which the city can simply deal with and move on from. If the hospital stays closed, and the most interested replacement operators remained locked out, that means Lakewood’s economy is hundreds of millions short of our potential, year after year.

The real cost of the Issue 64 plan is much bigger than the immediate cost. It’s the cost to our future.

Harkness’s appearance has been reported by cleveland.com, here. Her complete presentation to council follows.

Author’s note: “As is typical, Council generously granted me only 3 minutes at the end of the meeting and cut me off mid-sentence. How are they going to learn about other options for saving the hospital, if they don’t allow educated citizens to present information to them?”Read More